value

consulting, MPD

Want to Work With Me to Start Your Consulting Practice?

I’m conducting a Hudson Bay Start for a new offering: a Consulting Workshop. What do I mean? Several people have asked me for help in creating or sustaining their consulting practices. Since I’ve done that for 25 years, I know what works for me. I know the strategies behind how I work. We can translate […]

agile, MPD

Agile Project Manager, Scrum Master, or Product Owner?

I spoke with a project manager recently. She told me her story. I used to facilitate project teams as a project manager. Why a project manager? Because the project had a beginning and an end. We had (and still have) too many products to keep the same teams on them for a long time. For

MPD, product ownership

Does Your Team Need Minimum WIP Limits?

I spoke with an agile coach whose team works in flow, similar to this board. They don’t use iterations—they plan on demand. The column on the left, “Stories to Workshop” is their backlog refinement column. Recently, the team decided they need “minimum” WIP (work in progress) limits. Especially on the Workshop column. Why? Their product

MPD, product ownership

Consider Product Options with Minimum Outcomes

Do you have trouble fitting “all” of the necessary work into an iteration? Your managers might want to push you to do more. Or, the product owner thinks you can do more. Or, the team wants to do more (see Beating a Team’s Goal.) Agile approaches are not about doing more. Agile approaches encourage us

management, MPD

What Decision Will You Make Based on This Data?

Does your team have to keep two sets of “books”? You have an agile roadmap to see where you’re headed. You have a smallish backlog of the near/upcoming work. You’re delivering on a frequent basis. And, someone on your team keeps a Gantt chart because a manager wants to see the team’s progress in a

agile, MPD

When is “Agile Scaling” the Answer?

At the Influential Agile Leader workshop earlier this year, I led a session about scaling and how you might think about it. I introduced the topic and explained that “scaling” might not be the answer. My experience is that when people use frameworks for larger efforts, they experience these unexpected side effects: The framework actions

Articles

Eliminate Fake Certainty and Solve the Real Problem

Summary: Too often, customers have a “fake certainty” about the problems they want to solve. They might not have defined the real problem, but they have frequently defined the solution anyway. The risk is that we might build the wrong thing. When the product owner works with the customers to define the problem, then works

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